Six Lebanese medics killed in Israeli strikes on southern border towns

Emergency crews in southern Lebanon were again pulled into the line of fire, with six medics killed in two Israeli strikes on border towns within 24 hours. Lebanon’s health ministry said four paramedics from the Islamic Health Association died overnight Thursday into Friday in Hanaway, and two more medics from the Al-Rissala Scouts Association were killed Friday morning in Deir Qanoun En-Nahr.

The health ministry condemned the attacks as violations of international law, underscoring the vulnerability of ambulance workers and rescue teams in a conflict zone where hospitals, roads and evacuation routes have repeatedly come under strain. The ministry said the Deir Qanoun En-Nahr strike killed six people in all, including the two medics and a Syrian child. A video shared by the ministry showed medics responding to an incident before an explosion knocked them to the ground, a stark illustration of how quickly responders can become casualties themselves.

Israel’s military said it had struck Hezbollah infrastructure in Hanaway and had targeted two Hezbollah militants on motorcycles in Deir Qanoun En-Nahr. It also said it was checking claims that uninvolved civilians were harmed and said residents in both areas had been warned to flee. Those competing accounts sit at the center of a broader and increasingly grim question for humanitarian law: whether warnings and strike claims are enough when emergency workers are killed and civilian infrastructure keeps taking hits.

The deaths come against a backdrop of mounting losses in Lebanon. More than 3,100 people have been killed since March 2, when Hezbollah fired at Israel and a new war opened, according to health ministry figures cited by Reuters. The ministry said the dead include 123 medics, more than 210 children and nearly 300 women. Deir Qanoun En-Nahr had already been hit earlier in the week in an airstrike that killed 14 people.

The danger has spread beyond fatalities alone. A strike near Tebnine Hospital damaged all three floors of the building, including the emergency room, intensive care unit, surgical ward and ambulances parked outside. Hospital leaders later described severe damage at Hiram Hospital near Tyre, where 25 to 30 medical and administrative staff were wounded. The World Health Organization has reported that hospitals and health services in southern Lebanon have been damaged or put out of service, while the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said displacement orders helped force the evacuation of two hospitals in Beirut’s southern suburbs. For groups like Doctors Without Borders, the pattern has become alarmingly familiar: each strike on responders not only kills those on scene, but further hollows out the system meant to save everyone else.